Despite many instances of war and displacement in the past,
Khmer people have developed a broad spectrum of responses.
"Whatever I have done so far is for defending the territory and the nation as well as for serving the
Khmer people. I dare to sacrifice my life for the nation and I dare to die for the purpose of rescuing the nation from disaster," he said from Paris on Sunday.
Waves of refugees have come from other places since the
Khmer people arrived seeking a new life, and Canada continues to welcome refugees who are fleeing persecution.
The
Khmer people were once at home in one of the world's greatest civilizations.
A non-communist resistance movement consisting of groups that had been fighting the Khmer Rouge after 1975--including Lon Nol-era soldiers--coalesced in 1979-80 to form the
Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF), which pledged loyalty to former Prime Minister Son Sann, and Moulinaka (Movement pour la Liberation Nationale de Kampuchea), loyal to Prince Sihanouk.
This suggests that the term (yuon-TAC, Yuon-TAC, or Yuon-tac, however capitalized, but always italicized) was used by the Khmer Rouge--hardly "the border resistance parties" (which included the
Khmer People's National Liberation Front and the royalist Funcinpec).
In June 1982, three resistance groups--the United National Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Co-operative Cambodia, the
Khmer People's National Liberation Front, and the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (the Khmer Rouge)--signed an agreement formally establishing a coalition led by Prince Sihanouk (in practice the three factions despised each other).
(14.) With this I mean that the ordinary
Khmer people perceive the Chams as a "non-indigenous" people living in Cambodia whose existence had been tolerated by ethnic
Khmer people for centuries.
HALF A MILLENNIUM OF CIVIL CONFLICT, foreign invasions, and even genocide not only devastated Cambodia, but "also prevented the
Khmer people from weighing their experiences in historical perspective.
The middle ground lies in the mischievous eyes of children who have no memories of the past and are the first generation of
Khmer people in decades who will have the chance to go to school, grow up, fall in love and live long lives without battle scars.
For Cambodians, or the
Khmer people, as they are known, today's turmoil, including a coup and potential civil war, is sadly just the latest eruption in a history of close to a thousand years of periodic violence, much of it the result of scheming outsiders.
From an anthropologist's point of view, moreover, there is a tendency to conflate the
Khmer people with the Cambodian state whereas in fact
Khmer peoples have greatly diverse sub-cultures and are widely distributed through adjoining countries.